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Posts tagged with WATER WARS

Fish and Wildlife ServiceA temporary accord is expected to assure the protection of the tiny endangered delta smelt.

Like an early spring bud poking out of a thicket, a compromise emerged on Thursday in one of the intertwined legal battles that pit California’s major agricultural and urban water users against federal scientists and environmentalists. For the moment, both sides agree on how to protect the endangered delta smelt while managing water deliveries through the West Coast’s largest and most degraded estuary, the delta where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers meet.

Yet the agreement will last only until the end of June. There is a reason for its brevity: this solution is eventually going to be pre-empted by other federal plans for the tiny fish, and most likely by other lawsuits or legal rulings. And the controls the federal Fish and Wildlife Service exercises over the amounts of river water pumped south of the delta are usually lifted at the end of each June.

By that time the fish are larger and using a slightly different travel route that keeps them a safe distance from the suction of the massive pumps.Read more…

The West’s water wars are likely to intensify with Pacific Gas and Electric’s announcement on Monday that it would buy 500 megawatts of electricity from two solar power plant projects to be built in the California desert.

The Genesis and Mojave projects will use solar trough technology that deploys long rows of parabolic mirrors to heat a fluid to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. The steam must be condensed back into water and cooled for re-use.

Solar trough developers prefer to use so-called wet cooling in which water must be constantly be replenished to make up for evaporation. Regulators, meanwhile, are pushing developers to use dry cooling, which takes about 90 percent less water but is more expensive and reduces the efficiency –- and profitability – of a power plant.

Just as people use the sun to generate power for their homes, many homeowners capture rainfall for a variety of uses — from washing dishes to watering gardens during dry spells. But rainwater harvesting, as it is known, can be quite controversial — and in some Western states it is akin to theft.

Opponents of the practice argue that if rain or snowfall is captured, less water will flow to streams and aquifers where it is needed for wells and springs. If enough people hijack precipitation, the thinking goes, it would be cheating downstream users who are legally entitled to the water.

Proponents, meanwhile, see rainwater harvesting as a common sense solution to water shortages and storm water runoff – and find humor in the notion that collecting even small amounts of water is outlawed.

In Colorado, for example, it is illegal for residents to divert rainwater that falls upon land they own unless they have explicit permission to do so. Even collecting rainfall in a backyard barrel can technically violate the law.

“The rain barrel is the bong of the Colorado garden,” wrote a columnist in the The Gazette of Colorado Springs. “It’s legal to sell one. It’s legal to own one. It’s just not legal to use it for its intended purpose.”

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